Fifty years ago this Labor Day weekend, Murry and Audree Wilson left their three sons at home in Hawthorne while they went on vacation.

The story goes that the couple gave their boys $200 for groceries, but the money was instead used to purchase musical equipment. Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson – along with family friend Al Jardine and cousin Mike Love – wrote and practiced a song called “Surfin”‘ that weekend.

Within weeks, the Beach Boys had recorded the tune, and it quickly became a local hit.

Rick Sloan, a longtime friend of Brian Wilson and fellow Hawthorne High School alum, remembers the excitement of hearing his friends on the radio.

“I went down and bought the record, and I didn’t have a record player,” Sloan said. “It was a big thing. Nobody expected it.”

From that launch, the group went on to achieve worldwide fame and critical acclaim through the 1960s as its sound developed from simple surf rock to multilayered songs primarily written by Brian Wilson. For a short period, the Beach Boys competed with the Beatles to see which group could come out with the better album.

But they eventually broke up, as Brian Wilson struggled with schizophrenia. Then Dennis Wilson drowned while diving in Marina del Rey in 1983, and Carl Wilson died of cancer in 1998.

A rift developed between Love and the remaining band members, and they battled each other in a series of lawsuits for control of the band, its name and its royalties.

The group’s conflicts were apparent in 2005, when a Beach Boys historic landmark was erected by fans and family members at the Hawthorne site near where the Wilson home once stood – 3701 W. 119th St. In the 1980s, the Wilson family’s two-bedroom home was torn down to make way for the Century (105) Freeway.

Love did not attend the dedication ceremony and has since expressed opposition to it. Brian Wilson, Al Jardine and early band member David Marks performed at the dedication.

Brian Wilson recently told the Daily Breeze that he hasn’t been to Hawthorne in years, but he likes the memorial.

“It made me very proud, so proud that the Beach Boys came from Hawthorne,” Wilson said.

Anniversary concerts?

Love was reportedly working toward an agreement with Al Jardine and Brian Wilson to perform some 50th anniversary concerts together, according to his Los Angeles-based attorney, Harry Hathaway.

“The dream is that there will be an anniversary tour with Al Jardine and Brian Wilson to be at some key venues, which would just be wonderful,” Hathaway said.

But the likelihood of that happening is remote.

Love owns the Beach Boys’ name and will perform with a band under that moniker at the L.A. County Fair today.

In 2005, he told Micky Dolenz on the former Monkee’s New York morning radio show that he was glad the Wilson family home had been razed.

“It’s poetic justice,” Love said. “I felt like doing that to the Wilson house a long time ago. But the state intervened and they did it legally.”

Harry Jarnagan, a construction engineer from Tracy, proposed the idea of making the area where the Wilson home once stood a historic landmark in 2003. He only had a mild interest in the group until he saw their biography on television. He was disappointed to learn that there was no monument to them in Hawthorne at that time.

“I was in Los Angeles with my son and we went to check out where the Beach Boys used to live, and I thought: `That’s not right,”‘ Jarnagan said. “I thought it would be a cool thing to have a landmark.”

By 2004, Jarnagan’s efforts led to the nine-member California Historical Resources Commission unanimously approving historic landmark status for the site. Jarnagan worked with fans and the band’s family members to plan and construct a memorial near the former home the following year.

The plaque features a stone image of the band’s 1963 “Surfer Girl” album cover.

Love did not respond to questions last week about the memorial. His label, Brother Records Inc., recently opposed any fundraising for the memorial plaque in the name of the Beach Boys. Jarnagan, who lent $42,000 to the building of the plaque and the dedication ceremony, said he raised all but $14,000 of that money back.

Jarnagan said he is still proud of the landmark.

“I’ve got a huge amount of feeling for it,” Jarnagan said. “I’m glad people still come by to see it. I’m very proud of the whole effort.”

Surf music shrine

For Beach Boys fans who travel the world to visit Hawthorne, the tall brick-and-concrete structure is like a shrine.

Alessandra Bretta of Turin, Italy, stopped at the plaque during a recent vacation to Los Angeles.

“I’m interested in everything Beach Boys,” Bretta said, as she took photos and video of the structure. “One thing is to see something in books, another is to see it in person. This is one of the main pieces of musical heritage that we have. It’s a pity not to see the real home but this is a fine monument.”

Hawthorne’s Public Works Department is responsible for maintaining the monument, which officials say is tagged with graffiti about every other week. Two palm trees on either side of the structure will soon be replaced because they are dying, said Public Works Department Director Arnie Shadbehr.

Though the city is the monument’s official caretaker, Hawthorne Parks and Recreation Foundation Chairman Dick Huhn regularly maintains the site. He sweeps dust off the sidewalk in front of the monument and occasionally sells an engraved brick. He said he sees tourists visit the site “almost daily.”

“My kids were fans but I didn’t really get interested until I got on the Parks and Recreation Foundation,” Huhn said.

Rick Sloan, Brian Wilson’s high school friend, said their teen years were dominated by sports. At that time, Hawthorne High School had a leading football team and Wilson was a backup quarterback.

“Hawthorne was pure middle America, middle class,” Sloan said. “It was a melting pot of people from all over the U.S. because of the aircraft industries. Hawthorne High had tremendous spirit, and athletics was the driving focus of the high school.”

Sloan lived a few blocks from the Wilsons, and he says the neighborhood hasn’t changed much from the late 1950s and early 1960s when he was a kid.

“The houses are pretty much the way they were back then,” he said. “Very simplistic homes.”

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